


The Crone of Bagshot Row

by Margo_Kim



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous Slash, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Extended Families, Female Friendship, Flashbacks, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hobbit Culture, Hobbiton, Hobbits, POV Original Character, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, The Shire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 01:00:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3590364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gilly Underhill spent decades being Belladonna's friend. Now that Belladonna's dead, Gilly keeps an eye on her son, and Gilly thinks that Belladonna would agree that sometimes keeping an eye on someone means sending a dwarf or twelve their way. (Or, Belladonna Took's best friend watches Bilbo go there and then watches him come back again.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Crone of Bagshot Row

Bilbo Baggins was a strange one, no question about it. He’d been strange when he was young and though he’d seemed to straighten out as he aged, he wore his respectability like a cloak which he would one day cast off to the surprise of everyone—including his own, Gilly Underhill supposed. She had lived down the road from Bag End since it had been nothing but a hill, and you can’t watch a boy from birth to middle-age without forming a number of strong opinions about him. One of Gilly’s was that he’d managed to trick even himself that his Took blood wasn’t there. There was too much of his father in him, true, but there was also too much of his mother.

With this thought firmly in mind, Gilly was not in the least surprised when Holman came running to her one fine spring afternoon, wheezing and stabbing his finger at Bag End behind him. “He’s gone!”

“Who’s gone?” Gilly asked, knowing good and well who he meant.

“Mr. Baggins!” Holman said. “Last night, I saw a dozen strangers crowd into his house and this morning they’re gone, with Mr. Baggins with them.” Gaffer looked at her wildly. “They’ve kidnapped him! They’re going to kill him!”

“They’ve done nothing of the sort,” Gilly said, “unless there’s a form of kidnapping that sends the victim sprinting down Bagshot Row screaming about adventures. As for murder, I’d worry less about Mr. Baggins’ life and more about his livelihood, for you’ll have a stampede up at Bag End once his relatives hear he’s gone on holiday.”

Gilly had a good sense of satisfaction at the way Holman goggled at her at this. He was always the last to the gossip mill. Gilly had not had the pleasure of seeing for herself Bilbo sprint out of his Baggins and into his Took, but no less than four hobbits had already reported the sight to her. “Grinning like a mad man, some sort of pennant flying in the wind behind him!” Pansy had said. “I think he’s lost his mind.” The girl sounded almost admiring, albeit an admiration tinged with the kind of worry that meant Pansy herself would certainly never run off into the wild. Still, she was a young maiden in the early parts of a courtship that should lead to marriage; her heart was primed for romance of all kinds. Gilly was an old crone who’d buried her husband long ago, along with a damn sight more hobbits equally worth mourning. Her heart had space for romance, but it was a different type than the sort that Pansy might sigh over. Gilly loved travelling, for example, to visit her grand-niece twice a year because the household was so intolerable and the journey so terrible that it never failed to rekindle Gilly’s love for her own modest smial. That was a proper hobbit’s romance—a loving sigh for what you’ve already got.

Bilbo, of course, was no proper hobbit. Gilly thought about Belladonna and shook her head. He came by his impropriety naturally.

Gilly missed Bilbo’s leaving, but she’d witnessed the first part of Holman’s story, though he’d gotten the numbers wrong. There had not been twelve strangers but fourteen, and one of them had been as tall as a man of Bree. They’d arrived in clumps, a loud raucous bunch whose voices had marched down the street before them and trailed in their wake behind them. How Bag End had sounded with all that din crowded inside, Gilly didn’t want to imagine. By the time that Gilly had counted thirteen of them pass by, she had half a mind to call a constable for Mr. Baggins, for all the good that would do. The thain’s force were sweet kids, but the strangers who’d trod down her street wore thick leather boots and sported thicker beards. Dwarves in the Shire, Gilly had thought, could muscle in as they pleased.

“Dwarves!” Esmerelda said when Gilly repeated this fact. “What in heaven’s name does Bilbo have to do with dwarves?” Bilbo Baggins had been missing two days, and the Shire was nearly beside itself with excitement. Oh, they’d call it concern, of course, everyone placing their hands over their hearts and saying they hoped he’d come home safely, and that was true, but while they hoped, they relished a story they could sink their teeth into. Respectability was a wonderful trait for an individual, but it was terrible for a community. A simple life lived honorably was hardly grist for the mill.

“Do you think they abducted him?” Esmerelda asked, leaning forward eagerly. “Oh, how terrible that would be! Our poor Mr. Baggins!”

Gilly snorted. “If the dwarves kidnapped him, they did a poor job. Most kidnapper leaves with their prisoners in tow, and our dwarves left our poor Mr. Baggins behind.”

“You’ve always thought too kindly of strangers though,” Esmerelda said doubtfully. “Really, Mrs. Underhill, I seem to remember that Belladonna told you to look after your son, and here you are, not caring if he lives or dies when he's practically your nephew. Saradoc swears that Robin saw Bilbo thrown over a ruffian’s shoulder, bound and gagged!”

“Belladonna told me to check in on him now and then, not to lock him in Bag End until he’s dead. I dare say the Belladonna _I_ knew would very much approve of her son’s latest decision,” Gilly said. “And you tell Saradoc that I saw a trail of quiet dwarves set out at dawn with no hobbit hogtied between them, and I’ll stake my name on that.”

Though Gilly was never above lying to get the truth out, she actually had seen the dwarves leave. They’d walked in a steady line, with the weary steps of those who hadn’t wanted to be awake this early and still weren’t convinced they were. The only exception was the dwarf at the front of the pack who held his chin so high he was practically staring at the sky and walked on the dirt road like it was marble. Gilly could have been blind and seen him for the leader he was. When he’d caught her eye, watching them go from her front door, he gave her the smallest of nods. Gilly had nodded back solemnly as well, before she winked at him and watched him flush as she pointed a helpful finger in the direction of Bree. The dwarf, _her_ dwarf as she’d started to think about him, certainly hated being helped.

After all, he hadn’t asked for her help the night of Mr. Baggins’ unexpected party, and anyone with a pair of eyes could tell you that he was hopelessly lost.

It was the fourth time he passed in front of her house, his scowl so deep now that it looked like a wound, that Gilly had at last called out to him. “Would you be looking for your kith and kin?” she asked cheerfully, and only became more cheerful when the dwarf’s scowl deepened.

“You’ve seen them?” he’d said after a moment, one where he’d no doubt been wrestling with his own pride. Her Tom had been the same, which is to say a bit of an idiot when left to his own devices and sometimes even when you were trying to lend a helping hand.

“I’ve seen a fair amount of dwarves,” Gilly had replied, “and they’ve all been streaming in one direction. I take it that’s where you would like to go as well.”

He’d inclined his head, though his face was still as grumpy as before. Still, Gilly got the feeling that the emotion wasn’t directed at her so much as the world around them, and she could respect that. “Please.”

“May I ask your business?”

“You may,” he’d said, “but I will not tell you.”

Gilly could respect that as well, though she certainly didn’t like it.

She had pointed up the road, towards the hill. “Right at the top of the curve. Big green door, lovely little walk. You can’t miss it.”

Esmerelda would gasp horribly if Gilly told this part of the story. “Oh, Gilly!” she would say, her hand over her heart. “He could have been anyone! What if he’d been a robber? Laura’s Sam said that Hugo told Rufus that he heard them talking about burglaring all the way here. You could have gotten Mr. Baggins robbed, or worse!” Then Esmerelda would scurry off and tell the rest of the street before Gilly even had time to put on tea, and by supper the entire Shire would be talking about how Gilly Underhill hired a dwarf assassin to kidnap Bilbo Baggins in revenge for what he’d done to her begonias thirty-two years ago.

While the real Esmerelda prattled on about what dwarves could possibly be doing in the Shire (she was a sweet girl, truly, but you didn’t need to listen with both ears while she spoke), Gilly kept silent beyond murmuring agreeing noises now and then. Had she sent a criminal to Bilbo’s door? Perhaps, she could concede, though what extra harm one more criminal could do when there were already thirteen others entrapping him, Gilly didn’t know. But yes, he’d been a rough looking dwarf with a dark cloud about him and the look of someone who had done dark things. He didn’t belong in the Shire, certainly. Gilly could hardly imagine at all how he looked in Bag End. It had taken her a few days to find a word for him, with her limited vocabulary on the topic of rough figures in the night. Hoodlum, scoundrel, criminal, thief—the usual labels seemed lacking. After Esmerelda left for the market, as Gilly puttered around in the kitchen to draw out time until the next meal, she thought, _warrior_ , and put down the glasses she’d been cleaning with a satisfied thunk. Warrior. Yes, that would do nicely.

“But why would you send a warrior to Bilbo’s house?” Gilly pictured Esmerelda asking, for though Gilly felt little desire to be interrogated in person, she often found it quite useful to conduct one within the privacy and discretion of her own head.

“Because if seemed like the right thing to do,” she replied to herself as she moved through to her modest little library.

“But _why_?” her own version of Esmerelda needled again.

Very well. Gilly sat in a little armchair by the window, the only one in her smial, and fingered the old tome she’d begun reading yesterday, prompted by the mysterious absconding of Bilbo Baggins. It was one of her mother’s favorites, an epic poem written centuries and centuries ago about kings and soldiers, lost kingdoms and lost treasures, dragons, battles, even—yes—warriors, all number of strange foreign things made beautiful because she didn’t have to experience them for herself. There was a strange power in the words of value and honor that always brought her back, and for those moments where she bothered less with literacy, there were the beautiful wood carvings that had captivated her so much as a child.

Gilly opened the book up to where she’d left off. From the yellowed pages stared up a king of old, the kind you didn’t get in these parts these days. He had a crown of sunlight and eyes of granite and a mouth like a horse with an unforgiving bit. He looked as though he could have held up a mountain on his back. Gilly’s father had looked like that, before the illness, and Gilly would have followed him to certain death if he’d asked. Some people had the look of strength. The rest of the world did not, and so the natural division between sovereigns and the rabble was formed.

Belladonna Took had never looked stern or kingly or warlike in her life, and Gilly had been there for most of it, at play as children, at tea as adults, at the side of her bed when the end had started to come, just as Belladonna would have been at the side of Gilly’s if their fates had been reversed. Belladonna had not always been Gilly’s easist friend, but she had been the oldest, and so that had given Belladonna plenty of time in her life to get Gilly in trouble. And oh, how she had gotten Gilly in trouble. It was that mad gleam in her eye, that was how she did it, a look about her that promised that if you just went along with what she said next, you’d be in for the ride of your life.

Some people you follow. You know them at a glance.

“But why?” Gilly murmured as she ran her fingers over the king’s stern face. Her other hand found the locket around her neck, the dwarf-made one that Belladonna had brought back from Bree when they had been young and Bungo nothing but the quiet boy down the road. “Because there is too much of his mother in him, and it was time he remembered that.”

She did hope that Bilbo wouldn’t get himself killed, of course. She truly hoped he’d come out of this alright. But that was the adventurer’s risk, Gilly reasoned as she settled down to read. If he died, he would probably get some good out of it before he went.

And anyway—it really couldn’t be forgotten—that would finally make the two of them equal over the begonias incident.

 

 

 

The first snowfall of the year came early for once. Gilly woke a little later than normal to the sounds of shrieking children in the snow. Any decent snowfall in these parts could come up to a hobbit’s chest, which was the sort of thing that delighted only the young. Gilly was certifiably old by this point, but the sight was still beautiful from her window.

“Bilbo won’t be coming home in this,” she said to herself. The sentence surprised her. It had been a while since she’d given a thought to the missing Mr. Baggins. He’d been gone some seven or eight (or nine?) months now. Maybe ten. Her grasp on time wasn’t what it used to be. He’d been gone long enough that he’d passed from fascination to worry to idle speculation. Holman was quite distraught. He was certain Bilbo was dead somewhere. “It’ll be a Sackville-Baggins that gets the place,” he’d said glumly to Gilly just the other week, when he’d come to help out with some of her gardening.

“Ah well, Carmelia’s always liked your work,” Gilly had said. “She’s not likely to fire you.”

“That’s the problem,” Holman’d replied, with such dour sadness that Gilly had to laugh.

The little window in Gilly’s library let her keep an eye on Bag End. It looked as dark and shuttered today as it had the last seven or eight or nine or ten months. The emptiness had more gloom than usual. The snow made you realize there ought to be a fire in hearth, puffing out cheerily like Bag End itself was enjoying a nice pipe, and there should have been a small figure in a sensible outfit stamping out a path to the mailbox. When Belladonna had been alive, she never let a snowfall pass without making some kind of artwork out of it, usually three massive lumps piled on top of each other that she dressed in poor Bungo’s clothes. Bilbo hadn’t continued that tradition in earnest, but sometimes when Gilly had walked passed, there would be little mounds in the snow, tiny men the size of your hand.

There’d be a wreath on the door. There’d be candles in the windows. There’d be the smell of baking that wafted out every time the door opened. Bilbo loved to bake and always made too much, not in the way that mothers and wives around the village just _made too_ _much_ and brought the excess around to all the sad old men and women who didn’t cook for themselves. Bilbo genuinely baked to excess and so she’d always appreciated his baskets of meals more than anyone else’s. There wasn’t an ounce of charity in it. He had too much food, and it had to go somewhere. There were very few ways Gilly felt useful these days, so she relished the opportunities when they came, no matter how small and ridiculous.

There would be no food deliveries from Mr. Baggins this year. Gilly didn’t know where he’d gone, no one did, but he’d be a fool to return in all this. Gilly had never left the Shire, but she couldn’t imagine the roads out there would be any clearer than the roads in town. And dwarves, they were mountain people. Bilbo was probably buried somewhere beneath an avalanche right now.

The thought made Gilly scowl, and she rose. It wasn’t graceful, but she made it up and into the kitchen to put the kettle on. “Dying on a mountain,” she muttered as she pulled together her elevensies. “What a disgustingly Took thing to do. His mother would be right proud of him, I’ll tell you that, right proud up until she killed him for it.” Oh yes, Belladonna would be so pleased with her son. Her greatest regret in life should have been that she’d died in such a mundane way.

Belladonna’s sister said that it was heartbreak that had done it, eight years late. Belladonna’s healer said it had been a stroke that had hit her like a lightning bolt as she made supper one evening. Gilly couldn’t say either was wrong, but she’d had lunch with Belladonna at least once a week for sixty years, so she felt like she ought to have some voice in the debate. Bungo’s death had gutted Belladonna, and the stroke had been the killing blow, but Gilly thought the old girl could have been alright if she had remembered that she was a Baggins in name only. Belladonna had given up her adventures to settle down with Bungo, and she had been happy, as happy as any woman Gilly had ever known. And then Bungo had died, and Belladonna had lived, and there were still no adventures in her life.

“I used to talk with elves,” Belladonna said once, a few years before her death. “Do you remember? I’d run off in the morning and hide in the woods all day and sleep out underneath the stars until a whole group of elves showed up. I snuck up on them, you know. They like to pretend that’s impossible, but hobbits move more softly than even elves can hear. I’d creep up behind them and steal their dinner or tug their hair.”

“It’s amazing they didn’t kill you,” Gilly’d replied.

Belladonna waved her off. “They wouldn’t. They were a kind folk, mostly. And the ones that weren’t kind held themselves too highly to be cross at a little thing like me. One time I met the lord of Rivendell in those woods, and he scooped me up onto that big horse of his. I journeyed with him three days. He sang the sweetest songs.” And Belladonna trailed off, her eyes glazed and distant.

Gilly prodded her. “Come then, there must be some elves still lurking in the forest out there. Can’t you go and find them?”

“I’m too old, Gilly.”

“You’re a spring chicken.”

“That’s been plucked, roasted, and devoured. Now I’m the bones you toss to the cat.”

“You’re younger than me.”

Belladonna smiled wanly. “You aged better. You’re well preserved.”

Gilly clucked her tongue. “I’ve pickled. It’s the vinegar of my personality. You’re still practically a maiden, and you shouldn’t be talking as if you’re already decrepit and dying.”

“I’m not,” Belladonna said. “I’m just reminiscing.”

“Tooks don’t reminisce,” Gilly said. “Tooks make new memories every day and don’t learn a damn thing from them.”

“I’m not a Took anymore.”

“You married Bungo. You didn’t become him.”

“Don’t talk ill of my husband.”

“Who’s talking ill of your husband? I’m talking ill of you.”

Belladonna snorted. “Oh, thank you, that’s much better.”

“It is,” Gilly said. “No point talking ill of the dead, they can’t change anything. You’ve got years and years ahead of you.”

“To go run out into the woods?” Belladonna said it like a joke. It disquieted Gilly even more than Belladonna’s distant eyes.

“Is that so ridiculous?” Gilly asked. “What happened to the young girl who never stopped running after adventures?”

“She got married, had a child, and learned that there were different kinds of adventures,” Belladonna said, in a tone that was a cross between merriment and a warning.

“Yes, there are many different types. Adventures for maidens, adventures for wives, and adventures for widows.”

Belladonna looked away and sighed. “Gilly, please,” she said, her voice so tired that Gilly felt a flush of guilt. “I can’t pretend I’m a young woman and just run off into the wild. The time for that sort of thing is over.”

Gilly shook her head, her fingers tight around her locket. “Belladonna Took, I can’t stand the thought of you being one of those sorts who only lived wonderfully when they were young and life was easy.”

Without looking at her, Belladonna smiled. “Friend, don’t worry about me. I’ve lived wonderfully all my life.”

They never talked about adventures again. Belladonna had enough other friends who would happily rehash the past with her, whether that meant gasping in the right parts of the story or clucking their tongue appropriately. And when she died, they talked about nothing but what a good woman she’d become, once she’d gotten that wildness out of her. Some brave soul might have tried to bring up her old adventures at the funeral, but the other hobbits would shut that down quickly enough. Come now, they said—you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.

Gilly snapped the curtains shut. If she thought anymore of the hole on the hill that day, there was no one there to prove it.

 

 

 

It was summer and the days were beautiful when Bilbo Baggins performed his miracle. Just over a year after he left, Bilbo returned to the Shire and from the dead.

Gilly was napping when he came home. She napped a lot these days, napped and woke to eat and napped again until it was time for bed. When Petunia Cotton had died six months back, she’d left Gilly as the oldest woman in Hobbiton, and Gilly’s body seemed to be behaving accordingly. Every day she found some new way to ache, and her grand-niece was one more doctor visit away from forcing Gilly to move in with her, the sort of dire prospect that made you face death a little more willingly.

It wasn’t until Dora Sandyman brought some fresh groceries that Gilly heard the news. “Mr. Baggins ain’t dead!” Dora said cheerfully as way of hello as she started unpacking the greens. “Did you hear? He came back with mountains and mountains of gold and a sword as long as he is. My brother says that he even brought back a severed goblin head, but I don’t think that’s true because who would ever want to bring that back?”

For the first time in months, Gilly sat up straight. “He’s back? When?”

“Yesterday afternoon,” Dora said from the kitchen. “Just as his estate auction was wrapping up. I don’t think the bidders were very happy about that. I hope he wasn’t too attached to his spoons, I doubt he’ll ever get those back, and the same goes for a great many bits of his household because from the grumblings I’ve heard, people are none too happy to hear he wasn’t killed somewhere out there in the wild doing who knows what. Do you want me to make you some soup before I go?”

“Where did he say he was?” Gilly asked. Bilbo was back. Bilbo was alive. The urge to storm out of her house and up the road was almost overwhelming, but she wouldn’t trust her legs to get her to the door.

Gilly heard Dora pull out some pots, and Dora shouted back, “I’m not sure, to be honest. He’s being very funny about the whole thing.”

“I want to talk to him,” Gilly said.

“We all do. He’s locked himself up good and proper. How does chicken and potato sound?”

After Dora fed her, she helped Gilly walk around the room a little. Then she helped her back into bed, which had been moved out of the backroom and into the main parlor where Gilly could be closer to the essentials of life—food and privy. Tomorrow, another woman would come over to feed Gilly, maybe bathe her, to clip her toenails and to clean up any messes. Gilly’s pride stung at least once a day at the care, but she accepted it without any fuss. When she had been younger, she’d cared for the strange old ladies in the neighborhood, gone round to make sure they hadn’t died in the night and cooked them meals while they muttered to themselves. It should have been Gilly’s children that did this, but she’d had none. And that was that. Gilly had paid into the bank of good will over the years, and she felt no qualms about cashing that credit now.

“If I could,” she croaked at Dora as she tucked the blankets up around her chest, “I’d storm up to Bag End and give that scoundrel a good piece of my mind.”

Dora chuckled lightly. “I wish you could,” she said, “but no storming for you, you hear? My mum would have my head if she heard you did.”

Gilly fell asleep too easily that night, muttering about Took blood and what strange little boys grow up into, and passed into dreams without much notice. In her dreams, she flew over the Shire, low enough that her toes could brush the grass of the hills and high enough that she burst through the puffiest of clouds, and all in all she had such a pleasant time that when the rapping on her door woke her, she felt far more cross than usual.

“What?” she snapped, grateful that she slept in the parlor so that the person at the door could hear her yelling at them. No response came, and Gilly shoved down the familiar dread that her mind was going the way of her body by shouting again, “Who’s there? Who woke me?”

“I’m sorry,” said a familiar voice through the wood. “I thought you’d be awake. You always used to be up and puttering at dawn.”

Gilly jolted upright, a hell of a feat for her. “Bilbo Baggins?” she called out. “Good heavens, is that you?”

“In the flesh.”

She pulled shut the flaps of her robe and tied them tight. “Come in, come in already. Wipe your feet first.”

The door swung open, and there he was in the dawn light. He looked leaner, she saw that right away. A little tanner, a little stronger. He stood like he was used to a sword at his hip. He wore a red waistcoat that didn’t fit him right. But he still looked like a lost duck in her entryway, just as he had every time his mother had dragged him here. A journey across the world couldn’t change that.

“Are you in or out?” Gilly said.

Bilbo stepped in and shut the door behind him. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just a little strange. You’ve redecorated.”

“I’m too old to walk down a hallway is what you mean,” Gilly said. “So I sleep here now and that works better. You’ll pardon me for not standing, of course.”

“Of course,” Bilbo said, still looking at her like she was something he didn’t quite understand. “Are you …well?”

Gilly snorted. “To think that I’d live to hear Bungo Baggins’ son ask such a stupid question. Of course I’m not well. I’m too old for that nonsense. Bring over that armchair and stop gawking in my entryway.” Bilbo started and dragged over the armchair, which had been left sitting dejected in the corner for months now. Most of Gilly’s visitors these days had too many chores around her house to sit for a chat.

“What happened?” he asked, sitting.

“Nothing dramatic. I caught a cold I couldn’t shake, then a fever, then everything else. Once you’re old enough, almost anything will kill you. I’ve buried enough hobbits to know that.”

Bilbo clasped his hands in front of him. “I’m sorry. You seem hale though.”

“I’ve heard tale of a mad hobbit haunting Bag End like a ghost,” she said. “I’ll always perk up for a good story.”

Bilbo groaned. “Is that what everyone is saying then?”

Gilly was unsympathetic. “You know hobbits. Welcome home, by the way. If you forgot what it was like while you were off in the wilds, you certainly knew when you ran off in the first place. What were you expecting?”

He ran a hand over his face like he could rub weariness from his skin. “A longer trial before the judgment,” he muttered. He sighed and said in a more audible voice, “Yes, I know hobbits. Too well, I feel at the moment.”

“Disappointed at your homecoming?”

“I thought I would be glad to come back to the roads and fields that I grew up in.” He wasn’t looking at her. He didn’t seem to be speaking to her either. 

“It’s hard when you’ve changed and nothing else has,” Gilly said. Now Bilbo was looking at her.  

“You’ve changed,” he said softly.

“ _You’ve_ changed,” she said. “I’ve aged. Go put the kettle on.”

Bilbo went and put the kettle on.

“I’m not sure which is better,” Gilly said after a moment. Bilbo, crouched by the fire, turned to look at her. “Changing or aging, I mean. Up to a point they go so hand-in-hand that you can’t tell where one begins and the other ends. Then you realize that you’ve become the person you spent your life becoming, and after that’s it’s just a matter of new wrinkles and pains. You’ll understand when you’re not so young.”

He smiled wanly. “I’m not so young now.”

And he wasn’t, Gilly realized. Bilbo as old as her Tom had been when he’d passed. He wasn’t as old as his mother had been when she’d gone, but he wasn’t so far off. If he died in bed tomorrow, it would be horrible, but it wouldn’t be tragic the way it would have been even a decade ago. After Bilbo’s little adventure, the most tragedy it might hold for the neighbors would be the Sackville-Baggins moving in.

“Well,” Gilly said, a little unnerved by how you could watch a boy grow up and still be surprised when they turned up a man, “tell us why you’re here.”

With his back to her as he stoked the fire, Bilbo said, “I supposed I wanted to see a familiar face.”

“Plenty of those around, you said it yourself. Why me?”

She expected him to hem and haw for a few minutes until the truth came out. That was always how he’d been. Never one to take a straight path when he could wind a bit first. But he said simply, “You knew my mother. As she really was, I mean.” He stabbed the embers with the poker again and sent up sparks. “I remember the stories you told at her funeral. The way she used to run off chasing elves and quests. No one besides Mum really talked about that. You know the way hobbits will speak about scandal to everyone but the people involved. I’d almost thought she was lying.”

“I don’t believe that woman ever told a lie in her life.” Then Gilly thought about Belladonna’s face those last years of her life and added, “At least, she never told one she didn’t believe herself.” She studied Bilbo’s profile, outlined by the fire. “You look just like your mother. When she was older.”

If Bilbo had been looking at her, it would have been all too obvious that she didn’t mean it as a compliment.

“I must have more of her in me than I thought,” Bilbo said. The kettle began to whistle. “To go out chasing adventure.”

“And was it worth it?”

Bilbo’s hands froze as he reached for the shrieking kettle. Then he took the kettle off the fire. He went to the kitchen. She heard clinking. After a few minutes, he came back with two cups of tea. He rested hers on the tray she’d pulled onto her lap, rested his own on the armrest of his chair. He sat down. He closed his eyes. He kept them closed for a good long while, and then he opened them again.

“I don’t know,” Bilbo said at last. “I was glad for every moment. And I wish I had never gone.”

“Tell me about it, then,” Gilly said. When Bilbo said nothing, she added, “You can start with the dwarves. People thought they’d kidnapped you, you know.”

Bilbo reached for his mug and held it tight against his chest, taking comfort from the heat. “No. No, they didn’t kidnap me.”

Gilly sniffed. “Of course not. No kidnap victim ever looked so happy as you did, running after them.” Not that she’d seen him herself, of course. But Bilbo had smiled a little when she said it so she didn’t feel the need to clarify. “Come now,” she said. “You’ll need to tell the story sooner or later, if for no other reason than to clear those your companions' names. You’d hate for the Shire to think they were ruffians and thugs.”

“To be fair to the Shire,” Bilbo said, the edges of the smile still lingering as his eyes turned misty, “most of them are ruffians and thugs. At least a little. They wouldn’t have come on the quest if they weren’t.”

“ _That_ ,” Gilly said pointedly, “is a very interesting place to begin.”

“I don’t think I’m quite ready.”

“Tough. I’ll be dead before you’re done healing.”

This time, Bilbo smiled a smile with no joy in it at all. “So will I.”

“Well, I’m on a tighter schedule than you.” Gilly settled back against her pillow, cupping her mug. She looked at him expectantly, her mouth resolutely pressed shut.

Bilbo wrapped his fingers on the edge of his mug. He didn’t look at her. Then he said, like he was remarking on the weather, “I went on an adventure. And I suppose I fell in love." 

 

 

 

“Have you heard about Erebor?” Belladonna asked as Gilly bounced a fat-cheeked Bilbo in her arms. He was about four days old and had spent most of those days screaming every moment he wasn’t sleeping, but he seemed to have made his peace with existence. He was still staring around with a wide-eyed skepticism that seemed out of place on a baby’s face, but as long as he was quiet about it, he could look however he wanted.

“You know I don’t like fish,” Gilly said.

“Erebor isn’t a fish, Gilly. So no, you’ve never heard of it.”

Gilly kept bouncing Bilbo and shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll educate me.”

Belladonna laughed. She was still laid up, surrounded by more pillows that Gilly had thought could fit in one bed. Bungo was passed out on a couch somewhere, and all the more good for it since Gilly was half convinced that the reason Bilbo was fretting so was because he was copying his father. “You make it sound like I lecture you. We both know who lectures who.”

“Whom,” Gilly said. “What’s Erebor then? One of your elf tales?”

Belladonna held her arms out, and Gilly walked over to sit at the edge of Belladonna’s bed. Belladonna stroked her son’s cheek with the back of her finger and smiled down at his dubious face. “Yes, sort of, but I’m sure Erebor wouldn’t like to hear itself described like that. It was a dwarf kingdom that fell when a dragon attacked it. It wasn’t too long ago, no more than a century, I think.”

Gilly raised an eyebrow. “A dragon? Are there any of those left?”

“I get this story on the authority of the elves,” Belladonna said. “Specifically a very tired elf named Lindir who promised me a dramatic tale if I would stop sneaking up behind him and secretly braiding flowers into his hair.”

“You adorable menace.”

“Aren’t I?” Belladonna gave Gilly a dazzling grin. Even Bilbo seemed won over. “Lindir told me that the dwarf prince of Erebor was roaming the wilds looking for his missing father, the king. This was about two years ago I heard this, the last time I disappeared off into the woods, so I don’t know if he found him yet, but I expect not because, as you know, it takes a good long while for princes of lost kingdoms to find their missing fathers.”

“Of course,” Gilly said. “Naturally. A decade at least.”

“More, I’d say. A good century perhaps. Some impressively round number. We’ve both read the stories. We know how this goes.”

Belladonna and Gilly both laughed, and Bilbo started fussing again until Gilly shushed him and bounced him into his mother’s arms. “He’s going to be a tricky one,” she said as Belladonna pulled down her dress.

“Nonsense,” Belladonna said. “Bilbo will be the most delightful child in all the Shire and no one will ever be as perfect as him.”

“He’d be more perfect if he could figure out how to suckle.”

“Yes, well, perfection takes time.” 

They spent a few moments working in tandem to guide Bilbo’s mouth into place. He was surprisingly difficult to maneuver for a baby who couldn’t yet support his own neck. “Why are you going on about dwarves and elves then?” Gilly said when Bilbo finally, _finally_ , got the gist of the feeding affair.

“I’m thinking about bedtime stories,” Belladonna said, smiling down at her son. “I don’t know if I should tell him true ones. Bungo says they’re too frightening.”

“Well, don’t tell him that one at least,” Gilly said. “Frightening isn’t the point. That’s just tantalizing the lad. All you’ve got there is the set-up with no conclusion. You’ve got to let the dwarf prince reclaim his kingdom before you go telling that story. Otherwise it’s just a tragedy.”

Belladonna hoisted Bilbo a little higher. “I don’t think the prince is planning on reclaiming anything.”

“Of course he is, Belly. I thought we agreed that we’ve read the stories.” Gilly ran the edge of her finger along the little tufts of Bilbo’s feet. “No kingdom ever gets lost without someone going to get it back. And he’ll succeed, of course, because he’s good-hearted and noble-minded, but they’ll be some terrible cost.”

“Ah yes,” Belladonna said, “I remember now. There’ll be a grand quest against terrible odds. It’ll be a wonder that any of them survive at all. It will be noble and very dramatic, and someone will write a tremendous book about it someday after all the heroes are dead.”

“And we’ll hear about it in the Shire another fifty years after it happens.”

The two of them laughed again, Belladonna throwing her free arm around Gilly’s shoulder and drawing her closer. They laughed the way you do when the world was sunny and everything was a little lovelier than usual. Gilly had helped birth enough babies around Hobbiton to know the magic they could do to a house. New life brought out love in the air. It was as simple as that. Not for everyone and not always to the same degree, but here in Bag End? Right now, it felt like Gilly could slice love from the air like a piece of cake, wrap it up in a handkerchief and save it for later.

Belladonna rested her head on Gilly’s shoulder happily. “You’ll have to come with me one of these days, Gilly. I know you have adventure inside you somewhere. Bilbo can come too! Or he can go on his own as we go on ours. We’ll pop in into the arms of some hapless elf and pick him up before Sunday.” Belladonna chucked her son’s chin, and he smiled a gummy grin back up at her. “It’ll be good for him. I’d hate to think of my son growing up as provincial as you, dear heart.”

“You said _proper_ wrong.”

 _Yes, this is love,_ Gilly thought as Belladonna pressed a happy kiss to her cheek. This little bedroom gleaming golden in the afternoon sun—this was what love felt like. Or one of the ways that it could feel. There were as many types of love as there were people to love, and if Gilly had never treated herself to that buffet, she could at least appreciate her favorite selections.

“You will look after him?” Belladonna said quietly, resting her head on Gilly’s shoulder as her son began to sleep in her arms. “If I am not a fit mother?”

“You won’t be,” Gilly said, and Belladonna laughed. “But don’t worry. You get him into all the trouble you can. I’ll get him out.”

 

 

 

It took six cups of tea to tell the tale. Gilly thought Bilbo drank them just so he could get up and make some more. He didn’t know what to do with himself while he spoke. He stood, he sat, he paced. He fed tinder into the fire until it roared too large for the fireplace, and then he smothered it and started it again. He stood by the window and looked out at his own house. He almost cried, but he didn’t. When he was done, he was sitting once more in the armchair where he had started, his final cup of tea held in his hands, and he said, “I couldn’t go to the funeral. I couldn’t. So I came home. And now I’m here. And that’s that.”

After a long moment, Gilly said, “Well. It was a fine romp until the end.”

Bilbo almost smiled, which was worse really than not smiling at all. “I suppose so. That’s what it will become, won’t it? As the years go on. Just something interesting that happened long ago.”

 _Yes, dear, but that’s every story_ , Gilly almost said, but the time for that sort of bluntness would come later, and it would probably have to be someone else who said it. “There’s more to it than just that, surely,” she said instead. Bilbo almost flinched.

“That’s it,” he said.

“But coming home,” Gilly said. “That’s the most important part. Your mother would be odd for weeks after she came back from her adventures. She said that coming back to the place you started was stranger than leaving in the first place.”

Bilbo huffed a humorless laugh. “That’s true enough.” There seemed to be more waiting to be said so Gilly waited. There had never been a point in his life where Bilbo had been more stubborn than she was. “I had to prove who I was,” he said at last. “To people I had known all my life.”

“You are changed,” she said simply.

Bilbo spent a long time stirring his tea after that, the clink clink of his spoon against the china making her wince. She tilted her head and looked out the window, where the sun was finally beginning to rise in earnest and the last tendrils of the dawn fog would be curling back. She’d seen Bilbo cry enough as a boy, had caused some of the tears, had cured others, but he was a man now, and every decent thinking hobbit knew that when someone was pretending they weren’t crying, you let them go ahead and pretend. Bilbo hadn’t been crying when she looked away, but that was the goal. You glance discretely off in the other direction before their eyes can even get wet, and the other chap’s got all the privacy you could offer under the cover of plausible deniability. There’s kindness in discretion.

When she looked back at last, a few long minutes later when she figured that if he’d been crying and still was by now, he probably needed a “there, there” at least, Bilbo’s face was turned down at his cooling tea, his eyes squeezed shut. Then he opened them, and they were dry, and he drank his tea. “Ah, well,” he said with his mother’s smile. “At least I got all that gold.”

There’s a kindness in laughing at bad jokes too, and so she did.

“How did you prove yourself then?” Gilly asked as Bilbo poured himself a seventh cup.

She watched the line of his shoulders tense and relax. “My signature. On Thorin’s contract.”

Much to Bilbo’s visible surprise, Gilly laughed. Cackled really, as only old women could, for it was the kind of you could only really appreciated when you were old and vindictive and took pleasure, above all else, in having been right to meddle.  

“That’s more than fair,” Gilly said as Bilbo stared at her. “You vouched for his character in Lake-town? Well, he vouched for yours.”

And then at the sight of his face, she slid the tray from her lap and held out her arm to him, just as she had been he’d been a child and had scrapped his knees playing in the street. “Come here then,” Gilly said, and Bilbo came, sat on the edge of the bed as the last of his resolve cracked. She let him cry in her arms for a good long while, until the tears and the shaking stopped, and she held him there a while longer to be sure.

 “You’ll be fine,” Gilly said, her cheek pressed against his curls. “There’s just enough of your father in you.”   

 _“Right at the top of the curve. Big green door, lovely little walk. You can’t miss it.”_ That was what Gilly had said. The dwarf Bilbo called Thorin had thanked her, his eyes distant on the grand smial. Perhaps it looked quite small to his eyes.

“Tell me, Mistress Hobbit,” Thorin had said to her, with her on one side of her fence and him on the other. “The hobbit who lives there. What is his character?”

 _Stolid to a fault,_ Gilly almost said, for she could never resist giving her opinion when it was asked, and often when it wasn’t. But this was a stranger and what’s more, a dwarf. He looked rough and worn, mean and regal. Grand. Dangerous. Unknown. He looked like adventure and for a bitter moment, Gilly hated this stranger. He should have come ten years earlier, when Belladonna was beginning to grey. But Belladonna was dead, and she’d made her choices. She’d kept Bilbo out of trouble. Gilly supposed that made clear what she was supposed to do then.

“His character is poor indeed,” Gilly said. “Truly, a scoundrel of the worst kind. He claims to be a gentlehobbit, but don’t you believe him, good sir. He’s not proper as a hobbit ought to be, no matter how he protests. He’s too wild, too fierce by half. I blame his mother, personally. She was always out there, running off after adventure.”

“I didn’t think they bred wildness in the Shire,” Thorin said, starting to look intrigued.

Gilly had smiled at the stranger by her gate, her hand curled around Belladonna’s locket. _You’re welcome,_ she thought, and she could practically hear Belladonna snort. “Oh yes,” Gilly said cheerfully and with a little more gusto than had maybe been necessary. “You should just _hear_ what he did to my begonias.”

**Author's Note:**

> I like female OCs because firstly I'm always crying over fictional ladies, but OC ladies are like an extra level of fictional where at a certain point you're just crying, and secondly because hey, look, there's another lady hanging out in the canon, hell yeah, and thirdly outsider perspective is EVERYTHING to me. I'm just a simple girl in this big old world with simple wants. 
> 
> You can find more of me, if that's your jam, at [my tumblr.](http://margotkim.tumblr.com)


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